When we moved out to this farm (161 acres), one of the main goals and dream was to be more self-sufficent, DIY, and be able to meet our needs in a home-made way rather in a plastic-wrapped, ready-made way. This laundry soap was surprisingly easy to make, so don’t let the title DIY intimidate you at all. If you can boil water and grate cheese (extent of my cooking skills almost) then you can make laundry soap!

DIY Laundry Soap Ingredients:

Tools:

pot (that can hold at least 4 L, but if you have an 8 L one go for it)

grater (for soap use only, cuz no-one wants soap flavoured cheese)

spoon (if wooden – then for soap only)

measuring cup

funnel

containers for finished soap

Steps:

Grate your soap into your pot. I used a smallish bar of fruit scented soap from a dollar store. I’ll probably use a bigger one next time. There are recipes out there asking for specific soaps, but I just used a cheap one. If it doesn’t work well I’ll amend this post and let you know. 🙂 I also got my grater at the dollar store for $2. The pot came from a thrift store for $1, but I’m sure that it *really* wouldn’t hurt to use a cooking pot if you wash it well after. People wash their pots in soap all the time!

Ready to go!

Pour in half of your water into the pot and start heating it up. Stir the soap to get it to dissolve, and once it is, pour in your cup of Borax and your cup of soap soda. Continue to stir and heat until boiling. It may or may not thicken up at this point. Mine didn’t but it thickened up after I was done everything.

Once it boils and you are satisfied it is throughly mixed remove from heat and let cool a bit. You can add the second half of your water now if your pot is big enough and mix it up. However, as my pot was not big enough I put some cold water into my two milk jugs, left them in the sink, and then poured my soap into them using a cup and funnel. Once I had put the same amount into each jug I topped the jugs up with more cold water and stirred them with the end of my wooden spoon.

8 L of laundry detergent! You use 1/2 cup (125mL) per load, so that’s 64 loads per batch. And if you don’t use the borax (2kg) and soap soda (3kg) for anything else you’ll probably be able to make 7 more batches (assuming you can get 7 cups from the 2 kg of borax, my math/estimating may be wrong). So 7 batches X 64 loads = 448 loads of laundry!! My borax and soap soda probably cost less than $10 each. So that’s a huge savings. Huge. I’ve pretty much paid for them with the batch I just made. And it took less than an hour.

4 Responses to DIY Laundry Soap Tutorial

Hi, I’ve made this soap before. I used sunlight bar laundry soap which I found in Wal Mart in the laundry soap area. Otherwise my “recipe“ was identical. As I got to the bottom of my pail of soap it was separating somewhat and becoming lumpy but…it worked great. Definitely as well as anything you can purchase and for about 10% of the cost. I must admit, I haven`t made it in about a year and have been buying laundry soap. Seeing your post has re-inspired me to make my own again. Note on laundry soap in general: the production of liquid laundry soap has a huge environmental impact – powdered laundry soap has a much lower environmental impact. Better yet, make your own!
Sue